


Together

by resonance_and_d



Series: When Waiting Isn't Enough [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Kairi (Kingdom Hearts)-centric, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 06:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16300067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resonance_and_d/pseuds/resonance_and_d
Summary: Kairi has Sora and Riku back, but there's a whole universe to save, and they're not going to let Xehanort ruin it. This time, they'll save it together.Continuation of When Waiting Isn't Enough.





	Together

**Author's Note:**

> After a break, I'm back with the first chapter of the sequel! 
> 
> Currently, I have 12 chapters planned, but it's likely to grow longer than that since WWIE turned out about twice as long as I anticipated.

Kairi sets her keyblade glider down on the beach of the play island and steps off. It’s not until her feet sink into the warm sand that she lets herself feel how much she’s missed this. The smell of the sea mingled with island flowers, warmth all around her, the grit and flow of sand beneath her- it’s been so long. She’s different now- older, with more memories of her past, and hopefully wiser- but the island is the same.

She’s glad. It’s been so long since she saw the island. At least one of her homes hasn’t changed.

She could have just taken her glider to the main island. It would be the easiest way. But she doesn’t want to worry the people here, who don’t know anything about keyblades or magic or darkness.

So she dismisses her keyblade and takes a rowboat, like old times. It gives her time to think.

She hopes her dad got her letter. She tries to puzzle out a timeline of how long she’s been gone, but it’s nonsense no matter how she pieces it together. Time runs differently on different worlds. Her best guess is somewhere between one and two years, but it depends on whether the people of Destiny Islands were aware of anything when the darkness took the islands, and on the relative speed of time between worlds, so she could be wildly off.

Either way, as she rows, she thinks her dad will be glad to see her. But she’s not sure what to tell Riku and Sora’s parents.

Riku had opted not to come at all. Kairi doesn’t know exactly why- they’ve never talked about his parents, not really. She had assumed everyone would want to go home. She can’t help but wonder if Riku is too ashamed to face them, or if it’s something else. Riku had always been so eager to get off the island- maybe, she thinks unhappily, there had been a reason for that beyond simple wanderlust.

Sora, meanwhile, had wanted to come. But he’d hit a bunch of those “slippery patches” in his memory when he’d tried to express his enthusiasm. Namine said he didn’t fully remember his parents, that although Genie had tried to restore memories to Sora’s parents they might not remember him either.

“That just means I really have to go,” Sora had insisted, between two bouts of blank stares into the distance. “I need to remember everything.”

But then he’d had the longest blank stare yet, lasting several minutes and scaring Kairi and the rest of them. So they’d voted, and Sora wasn’t allowed to come. Kairi would do her best to remind everyone about Sora, and if it worked then maybe Sora would improve. Kairi didn’t fully understand what she was doing, when she reminded people about Sora. Namine had memory powers- but if Namine had been born from Kairi’s heart, it did seem logical that Kairi had some sort of power like that, too. It was just that Kairi had no idea what she was doing, and that the powers she had seemed to work completely differently from Namine’s. There is no tutorial on how to use them, no one to teach her. She’ll just have to teach herself.

Rowing the rowboat is so much easier than she remembers. Then again, she’d been smaller, before. Not just younger, or even just less muscular. She’d been impatient, and parts of her- her memories, her _self_ \- had been missing.

She arrives ashore on the main island around noon, judging by the sun. Sora’s house is nearby. She doesn’t go there first, though- she needs to see her dad. Sora’s parents can wait a moment.

It feels almost eerie, walking down the street with no one else around. She thinks, maybe they’re at school, or work. She sees one elderly woman working a garden, and relaxes a little. For a moment, she worried. In Radiant Garden, not everyone had come home safe from the darkness. But Radiant Garden had been gone for years, and the islands only a while.

She makes her way home, gets to the front door and finds it locked. She goes to knock, and hesitates. It feels wrong to knock on her own door. She could open it easily enough with her keyblade, but that feels wrong, too. What she wants, most of all, is to just sneak in the back, sit at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, and pretend that nothing has changed.

She takes a breath, and knocks, instead.

For a long moment there’s only quiet. Then, distantly, footsteps. And then the door opens, and her dad is there.

He breathes in when he sees her, almost a gasp, and then he steps forward and embraces her without words.

He holds her tight, and she holds him back. He’s shorter than she remembered. Or, well, she’s taller than she was.

“Kairi,” he says after a long moment.

“Dad,” she says.

They stand like that for a moment. When they part, it’s clear neither of them know what to do next. Kairi had plans for this moment. She seems to have forgotten them all now.

“Come in,” her dad tells her. It’s funny- she’s never needed to be let in to her own house before. But it’s been so long since she’s been here, she’s grateful for the invitation.

They sit at the kitchen table. Kairi’s dad brings her a plate of sweets and puts on hot water for tea.

“I got your letter,” he tells her. “It appeared on the table one day.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come back in person,” Kairi says. “The world has been in danger. Not just this world- all the worlds.”

Her dad frowns. “Kairi, I’m worried about you. This talk about worlds and danger- what’s going on?”

“It’s a very long story,” Kairi says. She summons her keyblade and puts it on the table in front of her, which startles her dad. “This is a keyblade,” she says. “They’re magical weapons, and only a few people in all the worlds have them. They’re very powerful, and the worlds need those of us who have them. Because there are people and things that endanger the world, and only we can stop them.”

He looks at the keyblade, and blinks.

“You’ve never given me any reason to disbelieve you before,” he says simply. And then, “If you hadn’t pulled a magical weapon out of the air, it might have been a harder sell.”

He smiles, and she smiles back.

“Can someone else do it?” he asks.

Kairi shakes her head. “The keyblades- they’re can be passed on in some sort of ceremony, but even so, they won’t come to just anyone. They’re mysterious.”

“Some sort of ceremony,” her dad echoes. “How did you get yours?”

“A woman named Aqua gave me mine when I was small,” Kairi says. “Before I came to the islands.”

“You remember?” he asks. Kairi had worried about this moment. She’d worried her dad would be upset, that he’d feel she was slipping away from him. But he breaks into a smile. “I’d always hoped you might remember.”

Kairi studies his face for signs of insincerity, but finds none. “I remember,” she confirms. “I… I spent some time in Radiant Garden. My old home. It’s a whole other world, and I’m not sure how much time passed for you, but for me it’s been about two years.”

Worry lines on her dad’s face deepen. He hadn’t _had_ worry lines before. “But- it’s been only just over a year since you disappeared. The night of the storm.”

Kairi says, “It wasn’t only a night. The entire island was lost to darkness for nearly a year. Sora saved us all.”

Her dad is still frowning. “Little Sora? Really?”

“You remember him?”

“Of course I do,” he says. “The number of times the two of you played together…”

“Do… do his parents remember him?”

There is a long, sad silence, interrupted only by the whistle of the tea kettle. That tells her all she needs to know. Kairi’s dad stands to pour water for tea.

“I should visit them,” she says abruptly. “I need to remind them.”

“It won’t do any good,” he says, setting the her still-steeping tea on the table in front of her. “I don’t know what happened to them, but they just get upset if you try to talk to them about it.”

“I have a talent for reminding people about Sora,” Kairi says. “It’s a long story.” But she doesn’t move to stand up from the table yet. She blows gently across her tea, takes a sip, nearly burns herself. Hadn’t she just been priding herself on how patient she’s become? Apparently she still has a way to go.

Her dad doesn’t pressure her to tell everything. He waits for her to be ready to say more.

“What about Riku’s parents? I’ve wondered,” Kairi says in a rush. “Sora couldn’t come- he’s not well. But Riku didn’t _want_ to come. And I’m worried for him. I never noticed anything as a child, maybe because I didn’t want to notice anything, but are they kind?”

He sips his tea, winces as he, too, burns himself, and says, “I don’t know. They mostly kept to themselves. I never noticed them being unkind, to him or to others. They were polite, but I never felt that I knew them well.”

“Were? Why are you talking about them as if…”

He shakes his head. “We lost a few people, in the storm.”

Kairi feels chilled. “Who else?”

“You three children, Riku’s parents, a couple of the seniors at the senior center, a few more people I’d never met. There didn’t seem to be a common thread. At the time, I was most concerned that you were gone. All three of you in one night- it seemed like you must have wandered too close to the beach and been washed away by the sea.”

“It’s not so far from the truth” Kairi admits. “I’d hoped no one was lost permanently. I guess that was too much to hope for.”

Her dad waits for further explanation.

“Radiant Garden almost everyone,” Kairi says quietly. “But they were gone for years, from the time I washed ashore here until Sora rescued the worlds.”

Worry lines, again.

“I didn’t remember anyone until recently,” she says. “It’s only now beginning to sink in. That I won’t see my mom again, my grandmother. It’s been so long, but I couldn’t grieve when I couldn’t remember them.” She is crying, a little. She wipes the tears away. “I still have Papa. And I have you. And Sora and Riku aren’t going anywhere, or any of the new friends I’ve made. I’m going to make sure of it. I’ll protect them.”

“You’ve grown up,” her dad says softly. “My little princess- I wish you didn’t have to protect anyone.”

Kairi is a princess twice over, and she knows that both kinds of princess need to protect people. From invasions mundane or magical, from threats from without, from darkness coming from the sky, or maybe the rotten, corrupted core of the world itself. But she smiles at him. “I wish the world didn’t need protecting,” she offers, but that just seems to make him sad all over again.

She catches him up a little more, touching briefly on Roxas and Axel, Papa and Namine and the Restoration Committee. She doesn’t bother him with details about Nobodies and Heartless, whose heart is where and why. It doesn’t matter that Namine was once part of Kairi, that Roxas was once part of Sora or that Axel was someone else entirely. They are themselves now.

The tea goes cold, and her dad makes more. But eventually it starts to get dark.

“I need to talk to Sora’s parents,” Kairi says. “And then I need to get back.”

“Stay safe,” he tells her. “Come back, when you can.”

She smiles.

“And,” he adds, “if you can’t make them remember… don’t feel too bad. We’ve all tried.”

Kairi nods. But she’s not worried.

The path from her house to Sora’s is short. She’s walked and run and skipped along it many times before, but it feels different now. She doesn’t let herself dwell on it.

She knocks on the door to Sora’s house, and after a moment, Sora’s dad answers. He blinks a little, rubs his eyes. “Kairi,” he says.

Kairi says, “May I come in?”

He turns, and Kairi remembers him turning a hundred, a thousand times before, to call to Sora, to tell him Kairi had arrived to play. “He’s not…” Sora’s dad says, and frowns.

“I know Sora isn’t home,” Kairi says.

He scowls, then takes a breath. He calls to his wife. “Honey,” he says. “You’ll never believe who’s at the door.”

He invites her in, and Sora’s mom comes down the stairs. “Kairi,” she says, just as shocked as her husband. “You’re back.”

“Just for a visit,” Kairi says. “Sora couldn’t come, but I wanted to let you know he’s okay.”

There is confusion on their faces.

“Sora,” Sora’s mom says, sounding puzzled.

“Your son,” Kairi says, not letting herself sound cross or impatient. She’d forgotten, too. And underneath all the memory loss and confusion, they’d thought that he was dead. Of course they had resisted remembering. “Everyone forgot him, not just you. It’s not your fault. But he’s okay- I saw him just this morning.”

When the confusion doesn’t clear up, Kairi says, “Remember? I came down that same side path to visit him, a hundred times. You must remember that, even if you don’t quite recall his face.”

Sora’s dad breathes in, and out, clearly trying to calm himself. “He’s okay?”

“He is,” Kairi says. She turns to Sora’s mom. “You took me to school sometimes. My dad was busy, and you walked past my house to get Sora to school anyway. And then you helped us get to the play island after school.”

“Oh,” Sora’s mom says. “You’re right- I do remember that. But my son- I can’t remember him.”

“He’s taller now,” Kairi says. A little mischievously, she adds, “more handsome. The same blue eyes, though. He and Riku used to fight over who would marry me, do you remember? Riku has gotten handsome, too. These days, it would be difficult to decide based on looks alone.” She’s not going to ‘decide’ between them. Not now, not ever. But she leaves that part out.

She continues, “His hair is still a mess, though. It doesn’t matter what he does, it won’t settle down. And he’s still kind. He makes friends with everyone, even when they’re mean to him at first.”

Sora’s mom nods, tears in her eyes. “That’s Sora for you,” she says. She takes a breath. “Why didn’t he come with you?”

“His memory was tampered with as well,” Kairi says. “When people remember him, it makes things better. He remembers them, too. I’ll bring him next time.”

“So he’s alive,” Sora’s mom says, “but not quite ‘okay’.”

Kairi smiles sheepishly. “He will be,” she says. “He’s better every day.”

“And where _is_ he? Where have the three of you been?”

“Another world,” Kairi says. “Well- a lot of other worlds.”

She repeats the explanation she gave her dad, but more focused on Sora. A brief aside to explain some of Namine’s powers over memories and how the Organization had used her, how Namine had worked so hard to make Sora whole again but needed Kairi’s help to remind people Sora existed.

“It sounds impossible,” Sora’s dad says. “But then again, I would have said that it’s impossible that I could forget my own son existed. Thank you for stopping by. Tell Sora we love him, that we want him to come home when he can.”

Kairi nods. “Of course.”

She doesn’t head to the play island this time. She takes off on her glider from Sora’s backyard. It’s secluded enough that she doesn’t think she’ll alarm anyone.

She waves to Sora' parents, and heads back to Sora and Riku, and her other friends. She’s glad she has good news for Sora. That they remember him.

She doesn’t know what she’s going to tell Riku yet.


End file.
